Do what's right!

"The king was deeply distressed, but because of his oaths and the guests he did not wish to break his word to her."
Mark 6:26

Despite having mild flashbacks to the gruesome picture of the head of John the Baptist on a platter in my Children's Bible (really? In a children's bible?) this reading brings up an important point for our lives today. Pray-As-You-Go points out that King Herod went against what he knew to be right and did what he knew to be wrong to please his dinner guests. He'd admired John the Baptist, it was Herod's wife that had a beef with him. Because he had promised his daughter anything after she danced for his guests at dinner, he had John the Baptist beheaded. Certainly our little white lies and minor maleficence won't have such horrible results...but should we still say or do them? We know what is right and what is wrong. God's law is written on our hearts and it should pop up on our mental "screens" all through the day. Do we listen to it or get swept along with the crowd? It's so much easier to follow the crowd into gossip or negative talk. It's easy to join the chorus belittling others, be they whole races or groups or individuals. It's much easier to try to please the dinner guests than it is to stand out and stand up for what we know to be right and true. Today, shake loose that image of John the Baptist's head on a plate (if you had the same bible I did) and look more at his life. He said and did the hard stuff, because the hard stuff was the right thing to do. Love from the chilly treehouse, heidi